With the development of the display technologies, three-dimensional (3D) display technology has been developed with a variety of display modes to generate stereoscopic vision for the viewer. The stereoscopic vision can be generated when the left eye and the right eye of the viewer receive images at different angles, which are further combined by the brain, such that the viewer can sense the layering and depth perception of objects for 3D display.
Currently, 3D display devices can be divided into passive 3D display devices and automatic 3D display devices. When using a passive 3D display device, the viewer needs to wear auxiliary devices such as glasses or helmet, etc. The automatic 3D display devices are also called autostereoscopic display devices, i.e., the viewer does not need the help of any auxiliary device to see the stereoscopic images. In general, an autostereoscopic display device often uses a lenticular lens array or a parallax barrier, etc., to achieve the 3D display. The lenticular or cylindrical lens array usually has a complex manufacturing process, but has high brightness. On the other hand, a parallax barrier can lose certain brightness, but has a simple manufacturing process and is relatively easy for mass production and, thus, is also a popular means to achieve autostereoscopic display.
Parallax barrier is based on the principle of pinhole imaging, projecting light emitting from a display panel into the left eye and the right eye of the viewer, respectively. An existing parallax barrier device can be a single layer of transparent medium, and opaque materials are then plated on the transparent medium with strip-shaped portions etched away for passing light, parallel to each other, to form a black-and-white grating, i.e., the parallax barrier. The existing parallax barrier device can also include a liquid crystal cell with a liquid crystal layer, where the liquid crystal molecules can be rotated by a control voltage. With the addition of polarizer to the liquid crystal cell, the liquid crystal cell can form a black-and-white grating, i.e., the parallax barrier.
Referring to FIG. 1, a display panel 10 is provided to display 2D/3D images, and a parallax barrier 20 is disposed over the display panel 10. When a liquid crystal cell is used to form the parallax barrier, not only 3D image view can be achieved, but 2D/3D switching can also be achieved. Using the birefringence property of the liquid crystal molecules to change the polarization state of the emitting light, together with a polarizer, transparent and opaque grating structures (e.g., liquid crystal slits) can be formed, forming the parallax barrier. When in the 2D mode, the control voltage is turned off and 2D images can be displayed.
However, existing liquid crystal slit technologies often can only achieve full-screen 2D/3D switching. That is, the viewers often cannot simultaneously view contents containing both 2D and 3D information. The disclosed method and device are directed to solve one or more problems set forth above and other problems.